Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

China exam season: questions to make you quail

It's exam time in China, with more than ten million high school students (A-level equivalent) taking the dreaded 'gaokao', a marathon exam which will determine which university, if any, they will gain entry to.

With so much at stake – there are far fewer soft landings in China for those who don't make the cut – it's not surprising that these exams bring out stresses and strains on students and parents alike.

My assistant here in the Beijing office says that parents will spare no expense in giving their children the edge. In her day the fashion was for 'oxygen therapy', where students would go to special clinics to lie down on couches and breathe in pure oxygen every day for half an hour in the month running up to the exams.

Others confined themselves to taking nutritional and vitamin supplements to get them into perfect shape before hitting the exam hall. It all reminds me of the marathon that was finals week at Oxford, although we got by on a few pints of real ale and the odd pro-plus caffeine supplement, which probably explains a thing or two.

The gaokao tests a broad range of skills – maths, science, English and Chinese – but the paper that seems to attract the most attention is the single 800-character essay question which every student must answer.

The newspapers here take great delight in publishing the questions each year, with the best and worst essays also being published when the results are all in.

This being my first 'gaokao' season in China, I've been bowled over by the broad and demanding nature of the essay questions. I don't know if Britain's A-level students get asked this kind of thing, but they certainly didn't twenty-odd years ago when I was sitting mine.

They aren't so much questions as mere prompts, designed to give the student a free hand to show the range and diversity of their learning and linguistic powers, although you must walk a fine line between staying on-topic and showing inventiveness.

In Beijing the prompt was simply "I have a pair of invisible wings" – a lyric from a pop song which became something of an anthem during last year's Sichuan earthquake.

Others, which included a small sub-title to point students the right way, included: "My thoughts on the post-90s generation", "Common knowledge", "The affection of leaves for the stem" (another song lyric), "Appreciating fashion", "Witness" and "Animal Head Auction", which related to the furore over the auction earlier this year of bronze animal heads looted from the Summer Palace in 1860 and included the subtitle, 'write an opinion piece on a hot social issue'. You can read more at Danwei.orghere and chinageeks here.

I know that when I was 18 this was exactly the kind of thing that would give me palpitations. At that age you want clear, concise direction. I still shudder at the memory of the first day of my literature degree when, after being sent to the bookshop to buy Dickens's Little Dorrit we were told to come back with an essay a week later.

I shall never forget the withering look of the tutor when someone (not me, thank god, but it easily could have been) asked "What's the title?" Stony silence. "There isn't one, just go away, think about it and write something intelligent if you can," said the Don. You could feel the room icing over as a bunch of 18-year-old wondered if they could.

I imagine that's how many Chinese students feel when facing this essay test. It has more in common with the fabled All Soul's exams than a high-school level test. (The All Soul's exams, to elect a handful of fellows from the best First-Class honours winners at Oxford that year always finish with a single-word essay paper in which candidates write for three hours on, say, "Harmony" or "Bias" or "Water" or "Integrity" to name but a few past examples.)

It also strikes me as a far more challenging and revealing test of merit than Britain's A-level system which, according to many top UK universities, aren't sufficiently rigorous to separate the wheat (A**** candidates) from the chaff ('A' with just a couple of stars).

Perhaps its time the UK followed China's lead and instituted this kind of national essay competition to find the real bright sparks. But then I say that comfortable in the knowledge I shall never have to sit the thing. In any event, I'm looking forward to reading some translations of the best (and worst) Chinese students' efforts this year.

PS…Michael Pettis, the economist, has an analysis of whether it's significant that the number of gaokao applicants fell this year for the first time in the last six years. The government says the fall (from 10.6m to 10.2m) just reflects changing demographics, but there's also much discussion that the spectre of rising Chinese graduate unemployment is playing a part. Why invest all that time and effort if there no job – or a crummy one – at the end of it?